The casting of Waqt: The Race Against Time looked, on paper, like a peculiar idea: Shefali Shah, then barely in her thirties, playing the mother of Akshay Kumar, who was older than she was in real life. In her new book, The Audacity of Being: A Sort-of Memoir, Shah returns to the role and the warning she ignored to take it.
The road to Sumi
Shah writes that her husband and the film’s director, Vipul Shah, did not want her to play Sumi. He had cast the character as the silent anchor of the family drama and first pursued Jaya Bachchan. Hema Malini was considered next, but the idea was dropped because it felt too close to Baghban, the 2003 drama pairing Malini with Amitabh Bachchan.
The film, which also starred Priyanka Chopra, was built around that silent family centre. The mother’s role was not decorative; it carried the emotional weight between father and son.
After watching Aavjo Vhala, Fari Malishu, the Aatish Kapadia play that Waqt adapted, Shah asked for the part herself. Vipul Shah refused and warned that she would be labelled a mother on screen forever.
- The role: Sumi, the “silent strength between the father and the son.”
- First choice: Jaya Bachchan, which did not work out.
- Second thought: Hema Malini, set aside as too similar to Baghban.
- The turn: Amitabh Bachchan, already cast as the father, recommended Shefali Shah.
A recommendation with a long shadow
Once Bachchan suggested her, Shah writes, “that was something Vipul could not turn down.” The offer became, in her words, an “opportunity of a lifetime” because it let her share the screen with Bachchan and her husband.
But the professional cost was real. Shah told PTI that she had expected audiences to admire the stretch. Instead, she said, the industry did not read it as range. “After Waqt, I was bombarded with ‘mommy’ roles,” she writes. She also feared becoming the next Nirupa Roy, the late star remembered for self-sacrificing mother roles in Deewar and Amar Akbar Anthony.
Why the story still matters
Waqt is a useful case study in Hindi cinema’s habit of fixing actors by the oldest character they play. A single age-up turn, even one anchored by a big star’s recommendation, can rewrite the offers that follow. Shah’s account is a reminder that casting is not only about whether a performance works; it is also about what the market does with the image afterward. That makes the book more than a behind-the-scenes anecdote; it is a primary source for how one film can position a performer for years.
Yet the memoir does not flatten the decision into regret. Shah says she continues to value the film because of Bachchan, describing him as “a legend who is so humble and treats you as an equal.” The Audacity of Being, published by Bloomsbury India at Rs 599, is now available in stores and online.
Source: The Times of India
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